ParaView 3.98.0 Now Available

Kitware and the ParaView team are happy to announce the release of ParaView 3.98.0, the final major release in the 3 series. This release addresses more than 300 issues, and features include modularization, improved co-processing support through Catalyst, and new data formats available for export.

VTK was restructured to use a modularized approach for building various components, and ParaView’s build infrastructure was revamped to make use of this. Users may now build variants of the ParaView library while choosing only modules of interest from VTK. This enables developers to build small, lightweight VTK and ParaView packages ideal for co-processing.

Catalyst, the ParaView co-processing library, leverages the VTK and ParaView modularization by enabling users to simplify which parts of VTK and ParaView to link simulation codes to for in-situ processing. In addition, the co-processing library was modified to add in extra Python methods that give a cleaner look to the GUI-generated scripts. Due to changes in ParaView, scripts created with ParaView 3.14.1 that generate screenshots will not work with 3.98. ParaView 3.14.1 generated co-processing scripts that only output extracts (i.e. data files) should be fine with ParaView 3.98.

With 3.98, it is now possible to export scenes from 3D views and charts as postscript, eps, pdf, or svg vector graphics. All text and annotations are exported as vector graphics, ensuring crisp reproduction for publications. However, 3D surfaces and volumes must remain embedded as a rasterized image in the resulting output file.

In addition, ParaView can now use the equation rendering support in the matplotlib package to generate mathematical equations. In future releases this capability will be extended to all text fields, but the current release only supportys categorical scalar bar annotations.

The team also redesigned ‘Properties’ panels and simplified the ‘Find Data’ dialog. The updated Properties panels now show a subset of commonly-used filter properties by default, with users able to easily switch to an advanced view. The updated panel also adds the ability to search for properties by name. The ‘Find Data’ dialog was simplified with the ability to specify complex queries for advanced users. Commonly used operations such as min, max, and mean are now accessible from the simplified interface.

This version of ParaView also includes an experimental interface to GPGPU processing in Los Alamos National Lab’s PISTON3 library. The interface takes the form of a plugin that must be compiled from source. This plugin exposes Piston’s on-GPU implementations of the slice, threshold, and iso-contour algorithms while minimizing transfers between the CPU and GPU.

The new binaries are available on the ParaView download page, and the updated online documentation is available on the wiki. As always, we rely on your feedback to make ParaView better. We encourage you to leave feedback and vote for new features, and get involved with the community through the mailing list.